


Put A Candle In The Window

by roxymissrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:05:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxymissrose/pseuds/roxymissrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What could he do? The kid had made up his mind long before this and no one could be a colder, more heartless bitch than Sam when he decided he was right—not even John. A throat tearing shout, an ultimatum, the slap of a screen door and it was done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put A Candle In The Window

1 _"If you walk out that door, don't you ever come back."_  
The words rolled around in the hollow places under his skull, all those places that weren't currently filled with a pounding headache from Hell. The inside of his mouth tasted like ass and Dad was nowhere to be seen. The truck was gone, but his bags were still thrown into the space behind the living room door so he must not have gone far. Habit had Dean cutting his eyes to Sam's side of the bed and his chest ached sharp and deep at the hospital corner neatness of the empty bed, the swept clean surface of the nightstand. No paperback with curling pages, no weird detritus Sam somehow always managed to accumulate and empty out of his pockets at the end of the day…clean. It was all clean and empty and. Dean wipes his hands on his knees. "So…that's that," he said, like it was an experiment to see if he could talk without screaming.

What could he do? The kid had made up his mind long before this and no one could be a colder, more heartless bitch than Sam when he decided he was right—not even John. A throat tearing shout, an ultimatum, the slap of a screen door and it was done.

Sam was gone.

2 _"I'll meet up with you in three days. Phoenix. Let me tell you what the job's about…."_

Halfway through the second day, Dad called to say he'd be late. "No problem," Dean had grunted between clenched teeth, and it took less than a minute to convince Dad he was fine. He'd hung up and peeled the sopping hand towel away from the punctures under his arm pit and sighed. He'd hitched out of his jeans and ripped what was left of his shirts away, stepped bare-ass into the tub and started dumping peroxide into his wounds. The fizzing distracted him for a few minutes. He hissed and poured—the shit was freezing. He emptied one bottle, opened another and poured. He stopped, grabbed the glass of Everclear he'd set on the toilet tank and sipped—so wicked evil it wouldn't let you gulp, and that was good. That was what he needed. He took a shower after, patted the wounds down with peroxide-soaked gauze. 

Walked over to the bed, took out his phone and dialed Sam. 

"Hey Sam, how ya doin'? Imma little drunk…" he stopped, breathed for a bit and hung up.

Later, Dean thought of that night as the point he kind of started to slide downwards, a bit.

3 _"I'm going to be delayed. Hooked up with Elias Lsigny—Walt and Roy's dad, you remember—poltergeist in that bar last year? Or was it the year before…anyway, check out our drop box in Portland. Got a possible job. You check it out, Dean, and see what you think. "_

Drinking as an Olympic sport lacked…reward. He wasn't going to get the gold for face planting in a parking lot, or the silver for throwing up after fucking somebody in an anonymous motel room. His life was a horrible third rate hack job of a novel, a garden of clichés. He snorted into his pillow. He needed to get up. He needed to clean up. He rolled off the mattress and dropped to the floor before he remembered the stitches across his knee. Fuck—nothing like getting your leg gnawed on by a Black Dog to make you appreciate Chihuahuas. At least them you could step on. He dragged himself upright, and used the mattress to pull himself standing. Checked his phone. No messages, but he didn't expect any. Not since the last time he'd drunk dialed Sam and described how he ate out some redhead in the backseat of the car. Kinda sort of while he was doing it. What the hell—she was down with it and fuck Sam for a cast iron prude. Fuck him.

A few hours later, he was clean and relatively stable on his feet. The sun was trying to blind him but a pair of Ray-Bans kept the worst of it out and protected the world from the purple bags under his eyes. He limped to a little hole in the wall eatery he'd stopped at…sometime in the last three days. At least he remembered the grinning pig over the door and the 'breakfast all day' sign in the window. 

It was dark inside and his head thanked him. He liked the place right away—wood floor, wood benches with green vinyl cushions and the smell of decades of food steeped deep in the bones of the place. The waitress was a young girl with a shit ton of eye-make up and a stud in her lip. And nose. And cheek. He liked the stud in her cheek. Made her look cute. 

"Hey. Know what you want?" she asked and Dean folded the paper menu in half.

"Yeah, hash, eggs over easy, toast with lots of butter and coffee, a shit-load of coffee."

She snorted faintly and said, "Yeah. Imma bring you an orange juice and a big glass of water too."

Dean grinned as sunnily as he could and she rolled her eyes—but she was smiling. Not in an impressed way…definitely a way that said 'you’re stupid as shit, but I'm gonna let you slide.'' Most likely gay, he thought and idly imagined her with another little Goth girl or shit rolling around together on a huge cloud of a bed. He was so damn tired and achy he couldn't get past the rolling so basically his hot fantasy was a couple of lesbians being kittens in a big white bed. Maybe he was getting old…the idea made him laugh. 

The plate she brought him was huge—almost a platter and thick enough to withstand a generation of bored dishwashers. The food…he groaned. The eggs were perfect, the hash so damn good the cubes of potatoes in it practically melted in his mouth. The chick stopped at the table. "Drink y'r water." And waited until he did then refilled his glass. 

"Do you—do you know me or something?" he asked and she flushed a pretty pale pink. 

"No, I don't _know_ you. God, what kind of question is that? You just. I'm just being nice." She scowled at him. "It's be nice to a loser day, din' you know that?"

Dean laughed out loud, a sharp bark of surprised laughter and it felt damn good. She reminded him of Sam. 

She grinned back—a lightning flash of warmth and then she was gone. He ate the rest of his food while he looked out the window, and thought.

+

Dad called and wanted to know if he could stay in place. He had no job pending but a lot of information he wanted to go through with Dean. Dean figured he could hang out here and enjoy good breakfasts and maybe let his knee heal up. He told Dad as much and he could feel the fucking frown over the line.

"Damn it Dean what'd I tell you about not taking care of yourself?" 

"I'm sorry sir, I wasn't…I'll try to do better. I will do better."

"That's not what I mean," his dad said with a sigh but let it go. Dean hung up with a measure of relief and fell back on the bed. He wondered what his brother was doing right then. He reviewed some conversations they'd had before radio silence and it went a long way towards getting Sam out of his head. It was hard to miss a kid who told you point blank you were a stupid waste of meat. Dean grinned up at the ceiling. Waste of meat—that had actually been kind of funny. Sam always was good at expressing himself. Dean rolled to his side, the grin still on his lips. He was so practiced at it, it came automatically when he thought of his brother. 

4 _Hee-eey, Sammy…what'cha doin'? Guess what I'm doin'? Go ahead, guess…I'm on a ferris wheel, dude! Wha—no! I'm **not** afraid of heights—dude, dude, did'ja know the little cars tilt back and forth, really they can, wait, I'll show you—whoops—"_

All Dean really remembered about that night was that he'd dropped his phone and it shattered into pieces and he was thrown out of the little carnival set up next to some school's ball field. So what he was a little drunk. As far as Sam had known, he'd fallen off the damn thing. Dean frowned out the windshield. Hell, for all he knew, he'd said something that had Sam hoping he had fallen. He needed to cut back on the drinking, or at least hide his phone when he was drunk. 

Dad was pissed off when Dean called him from a phone booth. Sent him to a drop in Atlanta to pick up a new card and a new phone. While he was there, he took care of a poltergeist in a youth center. Fucking puberty, hormones flying all over. 

After, he'd gone for drinks with the young lady who manned the office. She'd been pretty interesting, even invited him home to meet her roommate. He turned her down. He'd screwed her in the car, but turned down the offer of a threesome. It'd seemed like too much work, and the fact that he could even have thought that way kind of scared him. 

Two weeks after he'd picked up the new phone, he'd gotten a call. Since the only one who had the number was Dad—well, Bobby and Caleb, but neither one of those was likely to social call him at one in the morning, he answered, "On my way to New Orleans, just like you wanted. Poltergeist was fun. Hey, my ribs are still fucked up from the job before—" Dean got it like a flash that no one had actually said anything since picking up the phone and Dad didn't bitch him out about the way he'd handled the poltergeist, not to mention the spirit cat—"hello?" 

Just breathing on the other end, and he heard someone swallow, and then nothing—dead, empty silence. No number that he knew. Didn't take a rocket scientist to know what that was. He deleted the number and figured he'd change his number as soon as he had a free moment. And let Caleb have a piece of his mind, fuckin' busy-body.

5 _"Dean, you watch your ass down there. I can't do my job and worry about you too, fuck. Caleb called. He told me. Damn it Dean, I can't baby sit your ass anymore."_

Fucking Caleb, what the hell. The man was a fucking buttinsky and a goddamn—tattle-tale. Asshole. 

Dean leaned his elbows on the bar and watched life around him through narrowed eyes. Not so much that he wanted to look mysterious, he couldn't fucking see shit. Fucking palm trees, fucking swamp monsters. Monster goop right in the face sucked as much balls as you'd think and his eyes were still fucked up. But not so fucked up that the tall kid giving him the eye at the end of the bar didn't register. As soon as he squinted in the kid's direction, he was up and plopping down next to Dean like his bleary look had been an invitation.

"So, I've never done this before, but…it seemed like you were looking at me, and…" the kid led off with the lamest line in the world. Dean was a little embarrassed for him.

"Well, I think it was a little more like you looking at me, but okay."

The kid took a gulp of the beer he had sitting in front of him, eyes on Dean the whole time like Dean was going to maybe punch his lights out when he wasn't looking. 

"No, seriously…I'm. Hah, kind of lonely. I mean bored—defintiely meant bored. And I'm not from around here—Spring break."  
"Oh sure, spring break, yeah, cool--"

The kid gave him an off-center twist of the lips meant to be a smile, a sarcastic one at that and Dean couldn't help himself—he laughed out loud. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed.

"Yeah, I'm just guessing here but it's been a while since you cared about spring break," the kid said, snarky like Sam, and instead of pissing him off, it made him feel favorable towards the brat.

"Dude—you calling me old?"

"I don't know, grandpa—depends."

Dean grinned back at the kid. "What are you drinking?" he asked and ordered the same for himself, another for the kid. He liked this guy. Sure, he was probably gay and Dean was going to have to shut him down at some point in the evening but it’s not like he hasn't had to do it before and it almost always ended up just fine—most guys weren't as bitchy as chicks when they realized that they weren't going to score. The ones that were, well—that's what the hand to hand training was for. Sort of. 

One drink ended up being…a lot. And he discovered when he went to stand that he'd lost his feet, so his brand new friend twined Dean's arm over his shoulder, a comfortable perfect fit he was, and they swayed their way to…someplace. The kid's room, someone's room.

"This is a nice place," Dean managed once the kid dumped him on the bed. From a great distance, he heard, "You think so?" and then nothing else for a couple of hours.

+

"Hey, you up? I got breakfast."

Dean blinked hard at some guy, some big blond kid with big brown eyes and curly hair. Crazy hair. Sal. Steve…Stan. Definitely not Fran. Maybe.

The kid looked him up and down. "Wow, how drunk were you?"

Dean shrugged. Painkillers and booze don’t mix but last night, shit, last night between the pain needling him in the brain and his eyes all glued half-shut and burning, he hadn't given a damn and now. Here he was someplace he didn't know, with some guy he didn't know—in some guy's bed, he didn't know.

The kid set a cardboard tray of coffees and a paper bag down on the table next to the bed, and from the smell of it, hot, fresh donuts. "Stan, that's me. And before you freak completely, you just passed out here."

It actually hadn't even occurred to Dean that 'something' might have happened but now, yeah, he's freaking out a bit, because he'd been so out of it—anything could have happened. Right there, on Stan's bed, shoving Stan's donuts into his mouth and slurping Stan's coffee, he vowed never to get that drunk on the road again. Not to that point. Oh, and not to mix painkillers and booze. 

And later on that afternoon, when Stan had his fingers up his ass and his tongue hot and sweet like hazelnut coffee in his mouth, Dean vowed never to be so single minded concerning sex again. Hell, if it was good enough for James Dean, who was he to argue?

A few hours later, in the car and on the road again, he found it was nice to open his phone and find a message that didn't involve blood and death or even regret. He grinned and rolled his window down, belted out 'Sweet Hitchhiker' at the top of his lungs.

6 _"Meet up with me in Columbus, Ohio. Shouldn't take you more than fifteen, sixteen hours. There's a job out here involving a type of shifter. Dogmen, locals call it. Y'd think shifter, but the MO sounds a bit like a ghost, anyway, call me when you get to a motel..."_

He held her up, long legs wrapped around his waist, so light, like a fucking feather. He thought how easy it was to pick her up, to hold her, and how he'd thought about it when Sam was still fit under his chin, how light and easy he was to move—she groaned and he staggered to the bed, kissing, a hot, wet smear of desperation. She was beautiful and wanted him and he was head over heels staggered that this was so. 

Happily flattened beneath him on the bed, he held her open and pulled his tongue through her wet folds, twisting his tongue, his fingers, this way and that—whatever got her to gasp the loudest. He sucked at her clit like candy, him a bit toothy and aggressive, her whining and bucking up into his mouth, cursing when and eager fingers slid into a hole he hadn't intended. Appreciated that she didn't kick him off and loved her for going with it…grinned against her when she bucked up and cursed and moaned, "Oh hell yeah—"

The bed under him was wet, he was leaking like a broke faucet, she was trembling, she was soaking, dripping, hot and tight and so fucking close, at least that's what she told him—and then she hit him, wham, a fist to the top of his head.

"Ow."

"Quit fucking around and—and fuck me."

"Classy. I like it."

She grinned, her cocoa eyes flashing, her lips gone dark and plumper from biting. A wicked smile lit up her face and she said, "I know you do."

So, god, he fucked her, slid into the tight, hot, slippery hold of her, surging up inside. He pulled her over his lap, wrapped his arms tight around her tiny waist, held her right where she wanted to be and drove into her, over and over until she shuddered and moaned and clenched down on him, came in fluttery waves around him.

Dean closed his eyes, pressed his face into the sweat-slick velvet-soft, good smelling dip between her shoulder and neck and thought, 'I could love this woman. I _want_ to love this woman…it would be good. Right.'

"Oh Christ, are you going to cry—" she said, panting, nearly breathless but laughing anyway, "What a girl."

"Man, how are you so sexy and such a jerk too?" he snapped and groaned out a laugh of his own when she bore down on him and squeezed. 

"Shut up, you love it." And yeah, he really sort of-was halfway to certain he did…he didn't want to let this go like he'd let everything else in his life he wanted get away from him….

+

So, love. This was love and it sucked just as much as he thought it would. He should have known better. The minute they get under your skin—into your heart, they got weapons. He leaned against the car and emptied the beer gone warm in the sun. He was still trying to figure out why the fuck he'd told her…any sane person would have wondered the same. Any sane person would have kept their fuckin' mouth shut and not screwed up…maybe the best thing that would ever happen to him. Dad came around the corner, eyes on the empty bottle in his fist and sighed.

Dean wanted to know how Dad got off judging when he knew for a fact the man could kill a bottle of Old Grand-dad in heartbeat and a half-second. He just grinned at the man instead. 

"You ready, Dean?"

"Sure am, raring to go. Where we headed?" Dean tossed the empty into the back seat in a moment of hot rebellion and didn't feel the slightest twinge when Dad watched the arc the bottle took to land in the back and gave him one of those scowl-frowns.

"It's not going to be 'we', son. I'm headed back down south and you're headed to Bobby's. You need some downtime; you're no good to me the way you are now."

"What? But—sir, what about _your_ downtime?"

Dad got some kind of weird expression on his face, took Dean a moment to realize it was sympathy…."I don't—look, Dean. You don’t have to pretend, okay? I know you were seeing that girl. I know you got…attached. Smart that you broke it off but still…"

Dad didn't know _shit_ about him. Didn't know a fuck about what he needed. Dean watched him drive off in that black truck of his and worried at the inside of his mouth. At least Dad thought he'd broken it off with Cassie. He didn't have to know just how fuckin' pathetic his kid really was.

7 _"So, I did something stupid…and I don't want to talk about what I did I just wanted…I don't know. Someone to say 'you're not a total loser, assface.'"_

"You're not a total loser, assface."

Dean was startled into a laugh. "Thanks for that."

"You're so not a total loser or an assface. Come see me. You're in the area, right? I don't have class…nothing's coming up this weekend and. It's nice around here. We've got some decent bars, a dollar movie…and the best pizza you've ever had. Lemme give you directions."

"Uh, you better have good bars, dude, because Chicago's got the best pizza there is….but yeah, give me directions. If you're sure I won't put you out?"

"Dude, I wouldn't offer if I didn't mean it. And then you can tell me why you need a pep talk if you want, or we play it off if that's what you want. Deal?"

Dean leaned back against the headrest, rubbed his eyes. "Yeah. Deal. I'll be there in a coupla hours. Thanks, Stan."

"De nada, dude."

+

Dean rolled over on the bed, a king, which was a good idea and he was glad Stan suggested going halves on a decent hotel room. Two six foot guys on a dorm twin was more exercise than Dean had wanted. Stan taught him things he'd never known he wanted to know. Like how blindingly sensitive his ass was and how he could come just from getting fucked. Not a survival skill but good to know. A twinge hit him, a lightening bolt from ass to brain and it felt good actually. He cut eyes towards Stan chilled out in a in stolen pile of pillows and smiled. The kid let out a snort and smacked his lips and settled back into the plush pile. Wow…he could get used to something like this, Dean thought.

The whole evening he hadn't thought of Sam once. Hadn't called Sam in months, but his cell was full of calls to Stan and maybe….

Dean sighed. He really didn't have to be told that it wasn't exactly a good thing.

Damn it.

8 _"Dad. Dad, pick up. Damn it Dad, where are you? And don't send me a set of fucking coordinates, where the hell are you?_

_Dad, I'm getting worried. No one's heard from you—I mean. You know what I mean._

_Damn it. Dad."_

So here was the thing. He could go it alone, or he could get help. And if he got help, it would have to be Sam because no one else knew Dad like him and Sam. Sam might bitch bit—maybe a lot—but in the end, he'd come, Dean knew he would. Because Sam might be able to ignore a text, not answer the phone, or throw away postcards and letters and cards, but one look at Dean's face, one touch…Sam couldn't deny Dean. Dean had to believe that.

Option two, he could back-track where Dad had been sending him, and find out that way. He could find Dad on his own, no matter what Dad and Sam thought, he wasn't exactly a dummy. But he didn't want to. And when it came right down to it, Sammy owed him At least one. Dean had made an active choice to get out of his life, for _Sam._ For two years, not a word, not a call. 

Sam owed him, he _owed_ him, the fuckin' brat, for him letting Sam go without a fight. Nice and clean and simple…more or less. For not reminding Sam that family was everything and that once upon a time, he'd swore Dean was everything—he claimed. Okay, so maybe kids got caught up in something they swore was true at that moment and then grew up and out of whatever phase they'd been in but still. Dean hadn't done anything; he hadn't tried to hold on, not a fraction, not a whisper. 

Sam owed Dean.

Dean shifted on the bench, looked out over the highway and juggled his car keys and his life. One rest stop away. Debating the course of his life over a watery coke and a dry burger.


End file.
